The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a moulded article, in particular an automotive vehicle's part, comprising at least an elastomeric polyurethane skin showing a front and a back, which method comprises the steps of:                providing a mould with at least a first mould part comprising at least two mutually movable mould sections forming at least one seam;        applying at least one reactive polyurethane mixture to a surface of said first mould part to mould said skin with its front against this mould surface;        moving the mutually movable mould sections away from one another; and        removing the moulded article from the mould.        
In practice, mould parts consisting of mutually movable mould sections are used to increase the design freedom of the moulded articles. They allow in particular to manufacture relatively rigid or stiff moulded articles in moulds showing so-called undercuts. A drawback of the use of such moulds for moulding the skin or front surface of the moulded article is that the finishing degree of the seam between the mould sections is of utmost importance and may result in an optically not qualitative article showing traces of the seam between the mould sections.
In order to avoid this drawback, the skin can be made in a first mould and subsequently transferred to another mould wherein the further backing layers are applied. Such a method is for example disclosed in WO93/23237. When the skin is sufficiently flexible and when the opening of the first mould is sufficiently wide, the skin can be demoulded, even when the mould shows undercuts, without having to use mutually movable mould sections or so-called slides. The second mould, wherein the more rigid backing layers are applied, is then provided with the necessary movable mould sections or slides. A drawback of this known method is however that the design freedom is still somewhat limited. It allows for example not to provide a greater skin thickness in certain area's of the skin which would make the skin too stiff to demould it or to make a three dimensional skin extending in cross-section over a large angle so that the mould part shows only a relatively narrow cavity through which the skin has to be demoulded. A further disadvantage of the known method is that, in the case of undercuts, it does not enable to mould the entire article, including the backing layers, in one single mould (as illustrated for example in FIG. 1 of WO93/23237) so that the skin moulded in the first mould has to be transferred to a second mould. Of course, when such a transfer step could be avoided, this would reduce the manufacturing costs, not only because less handling steps would be required but also because less skin material would be required since in area's of the article which are cut out later to insert different inserts, no skin or backing material has to be applied.